Biography
Angela Davis is an American political activist, academic scholar, and author. She emerged as a prominent counterculture activist and radical in the 1960s as a leader of the Communist Party USA, and had close relations with the Black Panther Party through her involvement in the Civil Rights Movement. Her interests include prisoner rights; she co-founded Critical Resistance, an organization working to abolish the prison-industrial complex. She was a professor (now retired) at the University of California, Santa Cruz, in its History of Consciousness Department and a former director of the university's Feminist Studies department.
Awards & recognition
- honorary doctorate from the University of Cambridge · 2025
- honorary degree from Spelman College · 2021
- honorary doctorate of Pompeu Fabra University · 2021
- Time 100 · 2020
- National Women's Hall of Fame · 2019
Show all 15 awards →
- honorary doctorate · 2016
- honorary doctorate of Paris Nanterre University · 2014
- Blue Planet Award · 2011
- Thomas Merton Award · 2006
- American Book Awards · 1998
- Lenin Peace Prize · 1979
- honorary citizen of Magdeburg · 1972
- Jubilee Medal "In Commemoration of the 100th Anniversary of the Birth of Vladimir Ilyich Lenin" · 1972
- Order of Playa Girón · 1972
- Star of People's Friendship · 1972
Filmography14 titles
Vow of Silence: The Assassination of Annie Mae
Emicida: AmarElo - It's All for Yesterday
The Occupation of the American Mind
13th
The Black Power Mixtape 1967-1975
Toni Morrison: The Pieces I Am
Free Angela and All Political Prisoners
The U.S. vs. John Lennon
Malcolm X
Stamped from the Beginning
The Black List: Volume Two
A Huey P. Newton Story
A Place of Rage
Visions of Abolition: From Critical Resistance to a New Way of Life